Webinar hosted by Adam & Pris of BEYONDMONOGAMY

Beyond Monogamy with Adam & Pris break down the green and red flags of the open lifestyle, how to notice them, and what to do about them.  It’s about learning how to spot real matches, build attraction the right way, and protect your time, energy, and relationship. 

Few conversations in non-monogamy are as useful (or as rarely had out loud) as the one about warning signs. What does it actually look like when a connection is headed somewhere good, and what are the subtle cues that suggest a couple or a single may not be ready for what they say they want?  

When Red Flags Look Like Chemistry

Adam opened with an admission: for years, he chased red flags. He was drawn to what Pris describes as toxic or broken women who "needed fixing," people who wanted more attention, more time and ultimately a full relationship rather than a one-night stand or a friends-with-benefits arrangement. The attraction wasn't to the person so much as to the project.

Pris's read was blunt and affectionate at once. Because Adam's a genuinely nice guy, people saw him as someone they could take advantage of. She could spot those red flags fast precisely because she used to be that type of person herself. Responding to a viewer named Shaggy & Sunshine, the hosts agreed that most good people are caretakers by nature, then named the trap that comes with it, where both partners want to be the caretaker and "then everybody's just taking care of everybody."

Communication in Front of Others

One red flag they debated was the meet-up where one partner does all the talking while the other seems checked out. They admit it's a fine line. In their own past, Pris would disengage when she wasn't interested in the man across the table, and the evening became the Adam show. These days Adam's the talkative one and she's "catching up," which is a good reminder that a quiet partner isn't automatically a problem.

The green flag on the other side of that coin is a couple who communicate openly with each other in front of other people. Big caveat: open communication, not fighting. They've sat with couples who argued at the table in front of them, and it was, in their words, "so uncomfortable." Public arguing doesn't make anyone a bad swinger, but it does suggest cracks.

Their own tactic is simple and portable. If one of them says something off while they're out, the other says, "OK, I'll talk to you about that later," then raises it at home: "Hey, you said this thing, I didn't care for it." Their advice to everyone else is to save it until after you've left.

Say What You Want Out Loud

Vagueness about experience and expectations is a red flag for both hosts. They state upfront what they want and what their dynamic is, so nobody wastes time. If dynamics don't mesh, they'd rather know immediately than three dinners in. When someone's evasive, it often means they aren't ready or genuinely aren't sure, the classic example being "I've never been with a girl, I don't know if I like girls."

An audience member named Maha asked about the risks of meeting a new couple for a first interview the next day. The hosts reframed it away from risk and toward logistics: where are you meeting, and is it dinner or drinks? They did flag one pattern worth noticing, which is people who only ever meet at bars. Needing alcohol to meet someone can be a red flag all on its own. Beyond that, a first meeting is just getting to know people and finding out what they're into.

Guilt Trips, Scorekeeping, and Whole People

A significant green flag, in their view, is people who are "really, really good in several different aspects of their lives," not just the lifestyle. Someone thriving across the board tends to bring that stability into the connection.

The counterpart red flag is guilt-tripping and tit-for-tat scorekeeping. Pris described a past partner who guilt-tripped her after parties when she was the only one who played, because others weren't attracted to him, which made her not want to attend the next event. That escalated into the scorekeeping argument: "Well, you did this, so I should be able to do this." Both hosts stressed that this dynamic rarely gets discussed openly, and that it belongs to any relationship, not just non-monogamous ones.

They also offered a fair-minded nuance on the framing itself. Red flag and green flag language sounds black and white, but most newbies don't know the rules. They don't listen to podcasts or webinars before jumping in, and they're often unknowingly operating on red flags until somebody kindly points it out.

Unicorns, Bulls, and the Boundaries Test

Unicorn hunting, the hosts explained, is community-dependent. In polyamory it's considered a major red flag and a form of unethical objectification, stripping a person of their identity and adding them to an existing relationship "to come and go and use as needed." In swinging it's viewed more neutrally, largely because unicorns typically self-label and seek out couples themselves, unlike bulls, and generally aren't looking for a relationship. They also relayed a second-hand point: swinger couples announcing they're only looking for a unicorn can itself signal newness, since more experienced couples have usually expanded what they want to experience.

The most striking cautionary tale came from the chat. One viewer described meeting a couple where the husband wanted a blowjob and "offered his wife as payment," saying, "You can do anything you want with her, and she has no boundaries." The hosts' answer was immediate and quotable: "We want to be with people with boundaries." Adam confirmed he runs into that dynamic regularly.

Bisexual Men, Kiss-and-Tell, and Negativity

Adam, who identifies as straight, described himself as a vocal advocate for bisexual men in the lifestyle, noting that most stay closeted for fear of judgment and many show up with their wife and hide it entirely. He's found that when other men see him comfortable discussing it, they open up more. The hosts pointed to a past episode with Podcasters United by Swinging, a couple whose show is a resource for bisexual women, bisexual men and bisexual couples, and argued that MM play needs normalizing, since plenty of women find two men a major turn-on. One chat commenter offered a real-world example: their partner dislikes pressure from men, but if he plays MM first, she relaxes.

Kiss-and-tell is a firm red flag for both hosts. They've watched people at the club point across the room and announce, "We had sex with those people." Their rule is that what happens in your bedroom stays in your bedroom, and they won't out anyone who plays behind the curtain, even though they're exhibitionists who use the middle beds to put on a show.

Negativity is Adam's other dealbreaker: constant "woe is me" and complaining about other people. His reasoning is that "negative spurns drama," summed up in one of the session's best lines, "I love to hear about drama... I don't wanna be the tea. Don't make me the tea." Pris split her red flags by gender. With men, it's turning a normal conversation sexual within a day when she's given no signal: "You just want to get in my pants and you've just lost the opportunity." With women, it's giving her husband far more attention than her. As she put it, "If you're putting in the effort to be with him and you wanna be with me, you should put in the same effort to be with me."

Vetoes, Jealousy, and Learning Each Other's Language

The veto sparked the liveliest disagreement of the night, with chat viewer Texas Treasure calling it toxic. Adam and Pris keep a veto but frame it as mutual respect rather than control, and they admitted they've never actually used it. Compersion drew debate too, proof that even seasoned couples don't all land in the same place. Their most practical material came from talking about growth. Pris described evolving from needing to do everything together, "the thought of my man playing separately, no," to feeling secure enough to allow separate play and separate conversations, a shift she says happened mostly in the last two years. On resisting the urge to over-advise other couples, she compared it to telling a kid not to touch something hot: eventually you let them learn from their own mistakes. She also shared the script she uses for hard conversations: "This sounds really irrational, but this is what I'm feeling right now. If you give me a moment, I can probably come up with better words, but at this moment... I'm really butt hurt." Learning each other's language mattered too. Adam calls himself an arguer who'll "argue my point all the way down to the needle," while Pris has ADHD and processes out loud and impulsively, so he had to learn not to fly off the handle at her word choice. Her reframe on jealousy may be the single most useful takeaway: "I honestly don't feel like jealousy is a villain... it's how you handle your jealousy that makes you toxic." Naming it in the moment, then releasing it, is the healthy path. She owned a past failure too: when Adam was transparent about talking to someone, she'd snap back, "OK, why? That's uncalled for." As she said, "He was being transparent and I just shitted all over that."

Finding the Structure That Actually Fits

Adam explained why polyamory wasn't for him despite loving the idea in theory: sheer exhaustion from producing content, running the podcast and doing lifestyle stuff nonstop. He joked he'd forget he had a girlfriend for three weeks. He landed on friends with benefits as the right fit. Pris initially disliked that because it meant solo excursions, but she compromised and grew comfortable once she saw he wasn't going anywhere. They described friends in a poly quad, two couples where the straight men became best friends and the women are involved with each other and with the other partners, and Adam said he could see himself doing that if he and the other man were genuinely best friends.

There were a candid energy and aging check, too. They arrive when the club opens at 9 and are usually out by 11:30 or midnight. The bigger point underneath all of it is that red flags and green flags are a way of asking whether what someone says they want matches what they're built for, and whether you've got the honesty to say so out loud.

Honesty as the Ethical Baseline

Before the clock ran out, the hosts took on a hypothetical: what happens when you're approached by someone who is partnered and hiding it? Pris said that if Adam were hit on by a man whose wife didn't know he was bisexual or seeing men, the response would be, "It's sad, you should really be honest with her." The ethical burden lands on honesty with one's spouse, not on the outside party. The implied takeaway is: in non-monogamy, deception toward a partner is the problem, not the desire itself. The advice is to disclose, not to shame the attraction. 

Original webinar was live-streamed on SDC.com on Sunday, March 22nd, 2026